Tapping technology will create bounty for all

By Jeff Hecht

In Abundance&colon; The future is better than you think, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis creates an optimistic vision – but does it square with reality?

TECHNOLOGICAL optimism is a stepping stone to finding solutions for world problems, from poverty and disease to climate change and pollution. In Abundance, Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, and journalist Steven Kotler argue that innovation can provide 9 billion people with a world of plenty.

That sounds good in principle. Yet as a veteran technology writer, I found the book’s cheerleading tone rose rapidly to a crescendo of irrational exuberance.

Abundance is right in pointing out that small groups who challenge conventional wisdom can be vital fonts of ideas. But successful innovation requires more. New concepts must be scrutinised critically, tailored to meet users’ needs, adapted to work with available technology, and scaled up to production. Two guys in a garage can’t do it all.

New ideas must be scrutinised and tailored to users’ needs. Two guys in a garage can’t do it all

Some schemes described in the book, like Lowell Wood’s redesign of third-world toilets, are woefully in need of a reality check. Before going on to invent devices such as a mosquito-zapping laser, Wood worked for decades on “Star Wars” weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Now he envisions a New Age toilet that would burn faeces to evaporate urine, thus preventing water pollution while generating surplus energy that could power cellphones and lights. Curious how big this surplus would be left given that a person’s daily output of faeces generates “over a megajoule” of energy, I checked several references. It turns out that to vaporise

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